Six months ago Doka and I arrived back here in Korcula having spent Christmas and New Year with my family in New Zealand.
We moved back to Korcula to open our own business here, we arrived with very lots of motivation and belief in our business but with very little start up money, no premises to work from and no working papers! When I reflect now I find it quite amazing what we have achieved in 6 months.
Here is the space that we are now working from – up until 15 April 2011 Seba Dizajn was home to a small bar or kanobar, we had on several occasions sat here and had a drink, but never thought it would become home to our business venture.
- The last hurrah!
- Ruth Seba in kanobar with previous owner.
It was during our first few weeks back in Croatia while we were running about trying to get paperwork organised etc that I kept hearing ‘polako, polako!’, literally translated as ‘slowly, slowly’. An easy word to pick up and pronounce, and one that sums up Korcula life very well.
Generally it appears there is no hurry to get anything done. In some ways this is a very nice concept, however I am someone who is used to running about and getting things done when I need them done. I excel at slowly, slowly when I am on holiday but as an approach to work or by workers here I found it very frustrating at times.
I remember asking Doka one day, ‘What is the Croatian word for fast?’
I still don’t know!! And he often tells this like some sort of joke here, and Croatian people find it very funny… but I just want to get things moving along at a kiwi girl pace.
(nb. Croatian for fast = postiti, not one we hear very often but I will try to remember it for future reference)
There is so much to learn, I seem to have picked up a lot of ‘shop talk’ which is helpful but I am often lost when words come at me very fast. Thank goodness English is so widely spoken, when I was at school in New Zealand I never thought about learning another language (although one friend and I did attempt a correspondence Japanese course for a few weeks).
There has been so much else to do that my language ‘lessons’ have not been prioritized, now that our season is winding down I need to focus on the language, polako, polako!
What’s your favourite foreign language word?